BarbaraSher.com

Each dreamer gets one topic. Ready to move toward your dream? Come in and open a topic in your name so we can note your progress, cheer you on, console you, curse your enemies, take up collections and generally keep track of you and your excellent dream.

I have previously posted about promoting my book. My books are selling even if little at a time.

In the mean while, I get a lot of good comments about it.

I have begun some promotion of my blog, which I promote my book on, but I would love to hear about how best ways to not only promote my blog but also give what my readers need.

I have been writing about how to grow as parents and teachers and I have been doing that because I believe that is one of the best ways to be most effective parents and teachers... to model what we want them to learn.

But I think I need to come up with topics and things that offer parents who are not so into the touch feely stuff that I offer. I need to figure out what parents need and want to know to be their best.

Any ideas on how I can improve my blog to serve the REAL needs and wants of the parents and teachers?

Hey there. I also maintain a blog. I have some ideas but they might be ones you already know about. First, I've noticed that posting comments on other people's blogs is a great way to get people to view your blog. Look for blogs that have a lot of comments on them, read the blog then leave a comment that is helpful. For ex., you could say, "thanks, I enjoyed your last suggestion especially as my youngest child has been refusing to eat her vegetables" as opposed to just "nice blog." It's more respectful of the blog writer, so you're not just using him/her to promote your blog and it also will attract people to your comment and possibly to your blog.

Some ideas that I think are interesting is physical fitness with kids and parents. A gym near me has a special spot for kids to workout in. That's a good idea for parents who don't have a babysitter for when they go to the gym and is a way for parents to grow and set a good example for their kids through health and fitness. I also love yoga and wonder whether someone might come up with a yoga class for kids and their parents to attend together. This might work well with kids with ADD. Not sure, but I did practice some mediation exercises w/a friend's child who had ADD and was able to practically put this highly energetic kid to sleep!

Anyhow, these are my ideas. Hope it helps or inspires a new idea from you.

...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing..." ____--Jack Kerouac--____

GypsyGrrlGuitar wrote:Hey there. I also maintain a blog. I have some ideas but they might be ones you already know about. First, I've noticed that posting comments on other people's blogs is a great way to get people to view your blog. Look for blogs that have a lot of comments on them, read the blog then leave a comment that is helpful. For ex., you could say, "thanks, I enjoyed your last suggestion especially as my youngest child has been refusing to eat her vegetables" as opposed to just "nice blog." It's more respectful of the blog writer, so you're not just using him/her to promote your blog and it also will attract people to your comment and possibly to your blog.

Some ideas that I think are interesting is physical fitness with kids and parents. A gym near me has a special spot for kids to workout in. That's a good idea for parents who don't have a babysitter for when they go to the gym and is a way for parents to grow and set a good example for their kids through health and fitness. I also love yoga and wonder whether someone might come up with a yoga class for kids and their parents to attend together. This might work well with kids with ADD. Not sure, but I did practice some mediation exercises w/a friend's child who had ADD and was able to practically put this highly energetic kid to sleep!

Anyhow, these are my ideas. Hope it helps or inspires a new idea from you.

Thanks so much GypsyGrrl!

I think I may have heard something about the potential helpful aspect of meditation for children with ADHD. I am going to do some research about that!

Greetings Teach'em! OK, so your targeted audience is parents who would like to enrich their kids' education? Or just parents who want a place to drop their kids off for awhile and give them an interesting experience?OK - so if you want to appeal to the last category, target places that already are attracting kids and provide what you can offer as another interesting way to engage kids and educate while entertaining to the business itself. It's easier to find these places in the phone book. Like gyms, dance classes, after school activities, sometimes after school programs. Have you ever thought about doing auditorium presentations for kids in schools? You'd have to travel to make that a living, but there is definitely a need for such things. You could sell your book at such things by offering informative 'enrichments' that go along with the edu presentation you did for each school the kids take home. Another source is lesson plans for teachers, who don't have time to create whole systems to teach the kids they must handle. Home school in particular is a fruitful area. Many schools have home school students who come to the traditional school specialized programs periodically to keep up with the plan of education that is happening with their parents at the helm. As far as your blog goes, I have found that making lots of friends on Facebook is a pretty good way to distribute your "thing." But I think that Google plus does less "filtering" than FB does for your posts, because FB wants you to pay to more widely distribute your posts. Essentially everyone is an potential advertiser on FB, as well as a consumer, etc. Don't bother making a "page," because FB has changed their conventions about who gets to see the posts. Just post as if you are a person (with a business name.)I find that joining various forums really increases the amount of participation on my own blog. The more forums I join and participate in, the more people wonder what I'm doing. the other thing I do is have a card with my blog address on it. I ask people to visit my blog on my answering machine, when I meet people and have a nice conversation with them, etc. The easiest way to slide into this is "perhaps you'll think of someone who would find what I have to offer useful, so please take a card. Carve out what you have to offer in three words; a short sentence or a "slogan." when you write that, ask yourself, "Why should someone care about taking what I have to offer?"What age group of kids do you target?Oh yea, I have a number of blogs. http://myhalfof.blogspot.com is my personal blog.http://myhalfof.wordpress.com is about Alexander Technique

I would recommend you to read Austin Kleon 'Show Your Work'. He gave me a lot of ideas of what to write in my blog and how to do it every day. He may inspire you to think of ideas to promote your blog that you wouldn't think of on your own.

I posted this earlier for someone else here, but perhaps it will be useful for you as well:

- using Wordpress. because it is much easier and better- use a responsive design, so people can read the blog on mobile easier- from "Anna R. Allen blog her post about "Top 10 Self-Sabotaging Mistakes of Author-Bloggers" http://annerallen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/0 ... es-of.html:

That means you need to keep your goal in mind. If you are blogging to make a name for yourself as an author, then please, people, tell us what it is! I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but there are so many writers hiding behind cutsie monikers, I assume they're following somebody's bad advice. Don't listen to it! If you want to become a professional writer, DO NOT bop around the Interwebz pretending to be one of your characters, an anonymous pundit, or your dog.

Other advices from her are also useful, so you may as well read her article.

If you want to post about what parents and teachers would like to read, why not ask them? Do you have a mailing list? Maybe send out a quick survey for them to complete. You could ask which topics or information would be most useful or interesting for them. Or, if you do not go the mailing list route, maybe join some facebook groups whose purpose aligns with your blog and post the question there: What would you like to read/learn about? Or... Post a question you have about [enter general area of interest of your blog].

I know that sometimes there may not be a great response rate with those types of things. Sometimes offering an incentive can help. For instance, their response might earn them an entry in a giveaway.